If the gleefully caustic bite of “The Finkelstein 5” and “Zimmer Land” made you cackle and wince at the same time, you’ll vibe with the scorched-earth humor of The Sellout. Beatty’s narrator pulls stunts as outrageous—and pointed—as the retail-riot frenzy in “Friday Black,” using jokes so sharp they draw blood to dissect race, media, and myth-making in America.

Loved how “Through the Flash” folded routine into an end-times loop and how “In Retail” turned shopping into carnage? Severance channels that same eerie dread of work-as-doom, following Candace through a plague that fossilizes people in their habits. It’s the same satiric chill you felt when Black Friday mania in Friday Black made consumption look apocalyptic—only now stretched across a haunting road novel.

If the collection’s punchy standalones—like “The Finkelstein 5,” “The Era,” and “Zimmer Land”—hooked you with how each story lands a complete, unsettling arc, Her Body and Other Parties will hit that same nerve. Machado’s stories deliver the same distilled shock and resonance, each piece as self-contained and unforgettable as your favorite Friday Black entries.

If “Zimmer Land”’s performative-violence theme park and the retail-anarchy of “Friday Black” nailed late-capitalist absurdity for you, Pastoralia is a perfect next step. Saunders’s strivers clock in to soul-sucking attractions and corporate scripts, the satire hitting with the same bleak hilarity and moral sting that charged Adjei-Brenyah’s most biting set pieces.

If the off-kilter menace of “The Era” or the looping unease of “Through the Flash” drew you to the collection’s stranger currents, Mouthful of Birds amplifies that vibe. Schweblin’s stories slip from normal to nightmare in a breath, delivering the same surreal jolt and moral afterburn that makes Friday Black’s weirdest moments linger.